MARTHA HAILE

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Martha Haile was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2013, she was awarded her Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Design from the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design (ASFAD). While there, she participated in art/curatorial competitions, exhibitions, and workshops, such as the Experimental Video Art Collaboration with Olafur Elliason’s Institute of RaumExperimental  in 2012. Upon graduating, Martha taught interior design at Unity University, a private architectural school in Addis Ababa. She has also served as a consultant and mentor for students working in television on interior design for the show "Betlembosa". In addition to her work on several commissioned design projects, Martha also led and participated in live performance workshops, including collaborations with Norwegian performing artists in the streets of Addis.

 

In 2014 Martha enrolled in the ASFAD Fine Arts Masters Program. Her artistic experimentation expanded there through projects on the representation of the female body. One in particular, Fighting to Fit, focused on mannequins and their reflections of the complex hierarchies of race, gender, sexuality, and beauty standards in Ethiopia's urban landscape. Martha questions the representation of ubiquitously white mannequins in Addis, especially in relation to real Ethiopian women's figures, the influence of Western culture, and the ways Ethiopian women can never truly "fit" into these unattainable standards. As part of Martha's commitment to public artistic discourse and engagement, her project included a performance art piece that was enacted in "22", a commercial neighborhood of Addis Ababa's inner city known for mannequin displays.

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Martha continues to expand her artistic practice on both the local and international art scene.  She recently participated in the interdisciplinary European Forum Alpbach in Austria. Her latest projects continue to focus on race, gender, and the corporal, but also themes of forced migration as it relates to the body as well. She remains committed to having her work engage with the public. Most recently, she was commissioned by Ethiopia's Ministry of Transportation to design the logo and art on its newest fleet of public buses.